Employment Trumpet Sounds Retreat
It isn't retirement; it is a partial, strategic retreat from full engagement with the economic system. Beginning December 31, I'll be working 25 hours a week — rather than the 37.5-going-on-43 hours which is considered full time by Medco.
Cleaning floors. Buying groceries. Pruning bushes. Walking the dog. Petting the cat.
I had considered working somewhere else or (even better) doing something completely different. By staying with Medco, I will continue to make an unconscionable amount of money: 2/3 of way more than I need is … more than I need. That is, my individual income will still be above the median household income for Brown County, and way above the median per worker, although (curiously) not above the mean household earnings for households with earnings (which means some people in Brown County must be making football salaries).
Visiting my mother. Buying groceries for my mother. Paying bills. Paying bills for my mother. Resurrecting dying potted plants.
It seems far more likely that programming will be my primary focus at Medco than anywhere else. (Programming is a dead profession, all the hype notwithstanding. You have to work for a company that's a little out of date if you want to get paid for it. Otherwise you can become a biologist and write programs on your grant.) Programming is the only activity which holds my full attention for hours at a time, except for reading the occasional masterworks by, say, Thomas Aquinas.
Spending time in the woods. Riding my bike to the woods. Riding my bike to Manitowoc. Playing tourist (mostly on my bike) in northeast Wisconsin. Reading. Preaching. Teaching. Tutoring.
I will continue to work for (or under or perhaps around) Randy Kostichka. Randy has been my boss since 10 years ago when I first went to Shopko / ProVantage / ProVantage Health Systems / Merck-Medco Managed Care / Medco Health Solutions / whoever we are now. That includes a short period when I was formally reporting to someone else but still working on Randy's projects.
Randy is very nearly trained now. It seemed such a waste to walk away from all that investment.
In addition, I now have the opportunity to observe the success of my teaching high school data processing as one of my former students was hired at Medco.
Visiting Madison. Traveling to Alberta. Traveling to Sault Ste. Marie. Playing tourist in Milwaukee. Paying attention to the public business. Visiting the schools. Actually understanding statistics. Working on my photography. Visiting the parks. Updating the parchive. Gearing up my dad's woodshop which has been idle in my basement. Baking my own bread again. Finding new places to volunteer. Researching the Oneida Road.
Things really aren't so bad at Medco in a lot of ways. Just this week I told Randy that my current tasks are interesting – often seemingly pointless, but challenging anyway. However, I pointed out that at 37.5 hours a week I've been unable to carry out tasks worthy of two full-time jobs. Next year, at only 25 hours a week, I may only be able to complete the work of ONE full-time job.
Oh, well, that's management's problem.
Every change in life is stressful, and I have been anxiously asking myself, "Whatever will you do with those extra 12.5 hours every week??" To begin with, I expect to try to catch up on my sleeping, although how many weeks I can sleep for an extra 12 hours is an open question. After that, I will be looking for opportunities.
I really don't know how I will fill all my time. But I suspect that something will come up.
Angel's Trumpet Calls Dad Home
At the end of July, at age 93, my father completed his life. The end of life was a long, slow decline over several years. During that time we revisited familiar places, published my father's stories of his family, and wrote and published the story of my dad's own life.
The last few years were hard as he had to give up more and more of the activities that defined who he was – rail splitting, maple sapping, work at church, gardening, woodwork, walking, family gatherings, going to worship. At the same time, he was able to visit with the great-grandnephews (my first cousins twice removed), reconnect briefly with some of the people and images of his past, and start to make some new friends at the Rennaissance assisted living.
During the visitation many people commented on his integrity and example. I think he would have been surprised (and maybe a little uncomfortable) had so many people told him while he was alive how much he had influenced them. It was interesting to find out that many people who knew my dad in one part of his life had no idea of his interests in other areas. Someone might have known him as an active worker with Indian or jail ministry, for example, and not known anything about his love of woodworking and gardening – or the other way around.
At the funeral, I read the Moravian Easter liturgy:
- The Lord is risen!
- The Lord is risen indeed!
- Sing this aloud, proclaim it to the ends of the earth:
- The Lord has set his people free.
Clarion Call For Science
Experimental psychology has reached a cusp in its progress which makes it almost unbelievably exciting. Here is a science which seems almost brand new. The actual research is often very simple, much like the physics of the 1700s. The theories which inform the experiments, and which are confirmed or falsified by those experiments, seem poised to provide the same kind of explanatory power in the area of the mind as physics has had in the areas of matter and forces.
Many of the cutting-edge experiments can be done by anyone. In particular, they can be done by a 12 year old son of one of my Medco colleagues. At my suggestion, a recent experiment from the pages of Science has become a middle-school science fair project.
I'm eagerly waiting to find out whether the researchers' conclusions are confirmed or contradicted when their technique is applied to a sample of middle school students.
It isn't likely that I will suddenly leap into a new career in psychological research, but I am glad to help transfer some of the excitement to others.
Prophet's Trumpet Awakens Hicks
Jim Hicks was called to the presidency of the Western District of the Moravian Church. We had almost gotten Jim trained as the minister of the local church, so there was some disappointment at his moving on. On the other hand, for several months we had been privileged to see the Spirit working through Jim in unexpected ways, so we could send him off with confidence.
Naturally, this has provided me with several opportunities to preach. The next is December 31.
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